For more on the June 18 primaries, see our voter guide. On Tuesday night, we’ll have live results and analysis through the evening.
Roanoke Democrats were on track for a dramatic primary to choose a slate of candidates for November’s city council election. Four men were running for just three spots on the fall ballot.
Then, one candidate dropped out.
Even though Jamaal “J.L.” Jackson announced on June 3 that he was withdrawing from the Democratic primary, he hasn’t submitted the paperwork to make his withdrawal official. His name still appears on the ballot. If he were to place in the top three on Tuesday, he would be on the ballot in November.
The November election could usher in profound changes on council, with three of seven seats up for grabs. Incumbent councilwoman Trish White-Boyd is not running for reelection and councilman Luke Priddy, who joined council just a year and a half ago, has resigned and is moving out of the city. First-term councilwoman Stephanie Moon Reynolds is running for mayor and will not seek reelection to her council seat. White-Boyd and Priddy are Democrats, and Moon Reynolds is an independent.
Roanoke Mayor Sherman Lea is not seeking a third term, which has led to a three-person mayoral race between Moon Reynolds, Vice Mayor Joe Cobb and Republican David Bowers (a former mayor who has been elected as both a Democrat and an independent before becoming a Republican).
Should Cobb win the mayor’s race, his council seat would become a fourth opening.
The Democratic nominees will have some advantages come November based on the last two decades of voting trends in Roanoke. Only two Republicans have announced council candidacies: Nick Hagen, who narrowly missed winning a council seat two years ago, and James Garrett.
No independents have announced candidacies, but they could still file paperwork before Tuesday’s deadline.
Roanoke voters have not elected a Republican to city council since 2000, when Ralph Smith won a three-way mayor’s race with 35 percent of the vote and Bill Carder, who later switched to an independent, became vice mayor by winning the most votes for council.
The three Democrats agree on many of the expected issues that will arise in the fall campaign — opposition of commercial development of the Evans Spring property near Interstate 581 (although not entirely for the same reasons), crime rates, homelessness and education funding. All three think that the hiring a new full-time city manager, following last month’s resignation of Bob Cowell, should wait until after the November election and be left to the new city council.
There are, however, differences in the way each says he would approach those issues.
Here are summaries of each candidate based on in-person interviews with Cardinal News.
Jamaal Jackson
When Jackson, 42, released a statement in the early-morning hours of June 3 announcing that he had “decided to withdraw from the 2024 Roanoke City Council race,” the party’s November slate appeared set.
Jackson, however, has yet to send an official withdrawal notice to the Roanoke registrar’s office, and his name still appears on the ballot for the Tuesday primary.
All of this is happening even as Roanoke registrar Andrew Cochran says that Jackson has still not paid a $3,100 fine from his last campaign in 2022, when he ran as an independent and finished seventh out of nine candidates in the city council race. The fine was levied over late and incomplete campaign finance reports. Adding to Jackson’s campaign troubles, the Roanoke Rambler reported that Cochran’s office has raised questions about whether Jackson gathered the necessary 125 signatures from Roanoke voters to be eligible for the primary.
The Rambler also reported that an anonymous person emailed city leaders to say that Jackson, who leads a church on Williamson Road in northeast Roanoke, was running short of signatures and had members of his congregation copy signatures and addresses from his 2022 campaign for use in this week’s primary.
Cochran referred matters to prosecutors, and Roanoke Commonwealth’s Attorney Donald Caldwell said last week that it has been turned over to police.
Jackson has not responded to messages from Cardinal News for comment about the allegations.
He did sit for an interview on May 28, before his announcement to withdraw, to talk about why he was running.
“I have been working at the grassroots level in the city, within the city, strongly since 2019,” Jackson said while speaking in an office next to ReFreshing Church, where he is the founder and minister.
Jackson said that he previously worked for the city handling subrogation issues, determining financial penalties when someone damages city property. In recent years, he has served on the City Youth Services Citizens Board, Roanoke Neighborhood Advocates Board, as a jail chaplain and as a board member of the group FEDUP (Families Expecting Deliverance Using Prayer) with Gun Violence.
He said that neighborhood concerns would be a priority for him as a council member. Listening to residents can put council in touch with the roots and causes of problems such as crime and gun violence, he said.
“I believe the neighborhoods are the nucleus of the city,” Jackson said. “So, if neighbors are concerned, and neighborhoods are concerned, then the city should be concerned. I’m just trying to get a seat at the table so that we can hear what the concerns are.”
Jackson spent some of his childhood in Danville before his family moved to Roanoke in 1993. He and his wife, Porshia, live in southwest Roanoke and have three daughters enrolled in Roanoke City Public Schools.
He pointed out that November’s election could leave the council without a Black member in any of the seven seats, and possibly with just one woman member. Council member Trish White-Boyd is not running for reelection and Stephanie Moon Reynolds (both women are African American) is relinquishing her council seat to run for mayor. Jackson and Phazhon Nash are the only Black candidates currently running.
“We could be losing the African American representation on council,” he said. “Not only that, but right now there are three women on council, [but] there are no women running in this [council] election. There will only be one woman, Vivian Sanchez-Jones. If we’re not careful, she will be the only minority that’s on council. That doesn’t look like equity, it doesn’t look like
inclusion, and it doesn’t look like diversity to me to see a council that doesn’t look like the city. The council might not look as diverse and as progressive as Roanoke has become.”
Terry McGuire
McGuire got his first job while he was still a student at Franklin County High School, cooking fried chicken at the E-Z-N convenience store in his home community of Burnt Chimney. He worked at Blacksburg eateries to help pay his way through Virginia Tech, and kept working in restaurants even while pursuing a career in environmental policy in Washington, D.C.
Those jobs taught him about hard work, he said — experience that he believes would serve him well as a council member.
“I think it’s important to have someone on council from a working-class background,” he said.
He believes that improving the local economy is a key issue in this year’s council race.
“People want to see high-quality jobs come into the area,” he said. “I have a good friend who’s moving right now who got laid off from AEP, and she can’t find anything comparable here.
“We need to create an economic atmosphere where there are good jobs, where people can stay here if they want to. And I say high-quality jobs, with decent living wages, and pay benefits, and a pathway to retirement or some kind of safe retirement savings.”
McGuire, 42, finished fourth in a race for three spots in the Democratic primary in 2022, falling short of the general election ballot by 263 votes. He has nearly two decades of experience as a political and community organizer, especially for causes related to the environment. He worked for the Human Rights Campaign, and he gained federal policy and government affairs experience with the Sierra Club by working to support the Clean Air Act. He bought a house in the Old Southwest neighborhood in 2016, then moved to Roanoke full time in 2020.
He recently left a job with the environmental nonprofit Earth Justice, and he has been working as a substitute teacher as he considers pursuing a teaching license. That experience has given him experience with the pressures felt by teachers and students, he said.
A chief strength is that he knows “how to bring people together to build coalitions and partnerships and come up with plans to move things forward,” McGuire said. “I have worked with community organizations, other stakeholders, community groups, and helped get them in touch with their elected officials to come up with plans to affect change in their communities.”
He said that there are no quick fixes for some problems, such as crime and gun violence. He supports the work of Roanoke’s Gun Violence Prevention Commission, which has been criticized by some leaders such as mayor Sherman Lea for some of its approaches to reducing the number of shootings.
McGuire said that one approach to curbing violence would be to provide more programs and safe places for youths. To that end, he wants the city to restore funding for the Parks and Recreation budget that was slashed during the Great Recession in 2009. Adding to the city’s tree canopy and other green spaces is paramount, he said.
“There’s science and data showing that access to green space and tree cover improves mental health for everyone generally, and it correlates with lower violent crime,” McGuire said.
He is opposed to the Evans Spring development plan passed by the Roanoke Planning Commission and approved by council earlier this year, and he would prefer to see more commercial and residential projects proposed for Valley View Mall rather than building along the creeks and woods across I-81.
“I am committed to preserving the wetlands and the neighborhood,” he said. “I don’t like what council passed.”
Many of Roanoke’s issues are part of national trends, he said, such as the spike in violent crime during the pandemic (although the rate of shootings in Roanoke has declined since last fall, according to police data) and the rise in homelessness. Complicated problems require complex solutions, McGuire said. That includes harm reduction interventions that provide clean needles to addicted people to reduce the chance of overdose or transmitting disease.
“A lot of folks that are unsheltered have substance abuse issues and mental health issues,” McGuire said. “And those things are intertwined and can be very different for individuals. I support what the Virginia Department of Health and the Virginia Harm Reduction Coalition are doing in terms of harm reduction and meeting people where they are to try to show them that there is hope and that they can get better.”
Phazhon Nash
Nash, 24, is the youngest candidate in the council race. He is a Roanoke native who returned to his hometown after graduating from George Mason University to take a job at Carilion Clinic, where he works as an operations consultant for the healthcare system’s emergency services. He believes his youth is an asset to his campaign.
“I’m the prime age of most people when they decide, ‘I’m not going back there’” to Roanoke, said Nash, whose first name is pronounced “fay-zhon.”
“Luckily, I had a great job. … If it wasn’t for Carilion, I probably would not have come back. I want to reach out to young voters. [Not voting] is a weakness in my demographic. Many are tired of old politicians. When I tell people I am 24, they’re like, ‘Ah, new blood.’”
Public health is a priority for Nash, who earned a degree in community health and minored in American government at George Mason University. He said that community healthcare is a common denominator in many city issues, which include improving public infrastructure, reducing poverty and crime, and protecting the environment.
“I tend to look at them through the lens of health and wellness,” he said. “For our community to be healthy and well, we have to have a good social environment. It has to be safe in your neighborhood. The air you breathe has to be clean and healthy. Even the infrastructure can make a community or a group of people feel safe, because if your neighborhood doesn’t have sidewalks, streetlights, how encouraged are you to go and walk? Thirty minutes [of walking] a day, every day, can drastically reduce cardiovascular disease. So, that’s a small little thing that impacts a person’s physical health, their well-being, and being social and out in their community. Just a sidewalk can play a big role.”
He said that investing in community centers and libraries can have an impact in reducing the number of shootings and violent crime by giving young people safe places to go.
“I want to see us really rely on improving community health-driven approaches to tackling gun violence,” he said.
Nash grew up in northwest Roanoke, and graduated from Northside High School in Roanoke County. He lives in his late grandmother’s home near the Evans Spring property, which has been eyed for potential development since at least 2019. He does not support any commercial development of the property, he said, but would support housing constructed along hilltops above Evans Spring.
“There’s parts of hilltop where it’s already designated for residential, so I’d like to see homes put of a similar style and scale next to the currently existing homes,” he said. “I would be in support of that because we do need housing badly, but no commercial development in that area.”
He said that his family was affected by Roanoke’s urban renewal projects of the 1950s through the 1970s, when blocks of mostly Black neighborhoods, churches, schools and businesses in northeast Roanoke were razed in the name of progress. He believes development of Evans Spring would be viewed by many Black Roanokers as the same kind of destruction. He would prefer to see abandoned or underused commercial spaces redeveloped instead.
“Look at the Roanoke-Salem Plaza on Melrose” Avenue, he said. “There are no substantial businesses for citizens to use and enjoy. … Why don’t we say to the owners of that building, how can we, the city of Roanoke help you to bring in businesses, restaurants, entertainment?”
Nash wants the next city council to hire a new city manager, following Cowell’s resignation last month.
“If the current council makes a hire, then come January, that person doesn’t reflect or is not able to take the city in the direction that the new council wants to go,” he said, “Then what’s the point of bringing this person in?”
Nash sums up his campaign by saying his “intangibles” are his strengths. Those include passion, work ethic and youth.
“Everyone who’s running has passion, or we all would not be doing this,” he said. “But for me, I genuinely, genuinely care about my city. I want to see my city thrive.”
Benjamin Woods
Woods, 32, had no plans to run for city council. Then, residents started receiving their real estate assessments late last winter.
A hot housing market boosted sale prices the past couple of years, which in turn led to much higher assessments for many Roanoke homeowners — Woods, a Raleigh Court resident since 2022, being one of them. When city council decided to leave tax rates alone during the spring budget process, Woods felt compelled to run.
“I’m the only one that has identified skyrocketing valuations,” Woods said. “Property taxes, it’s an issue no one else has brought up. I’m not sure why that is. Especially because everyone wants to talk about building affordable housing. With a tax rate unadjusted and valuations jumping as high as they are, over a two-year period it’s almost 40% [in increases] for a lot of people. That creates another mortgage that makes housing more unaffordable.”
If elected to council, Woods wants to place a moratorium on Roanoke’s annual assessments. He wants to return any budget surpluses to residents to reduce their tax burdens, he said. He also wants the city to abolish its car tax and reduce solid waste collection fees.
Clarification, 11:32 a.m.: Woods clarified that he would like to see either Roanoke’s real estate tax rates reduced or other fees and taxes, such as the car tax, cut instead.
Doing so would be an acknowledgement from the city that “we get that everyone’s having a difficult time right now,” Woods said. “Let us not add to the pressures you already have.”
To combat any reductions in city services that might result from declining budget revenues, Woods said that he would look closely at whether the city gets a high return on its spending, citing the nearly $2 million Roanoke gives to Visit Virginia’s Blue Ridge, the Roanoke-based tourism marketing group that includes participating counties of Roanoke, Botetourt and Franklin and the cities of Roanoke and Salem.
“I want to see what some of these groups, like what their actual stats are, that are easier to find, because you know, everything’s pretty vague,” Woods said.
Woods grew up in Montgomery County, where his grandparents were farmers. He graduated from Eastern Montgomery High School, then enrolled at Radford University before opting to work in restaurants and construction while his wife, Sarah, completed college at Old Dominion, where he later earned his degree.
While working those jobs, Woods got a crash course in economics and politics. During his restaurant shifts, he noticed employees were being forced to work more than their allotted hours without increased pay or benefits. When he and his co-workers started talking about joining a union, he was fired, he said. He was later fired from a construction job for questioning work hours and proposing unionizing, he said. Soon after, he finished his degree in professional communications and began working in politics.
He owns High Top Consulting, which worked on political campaigns in North Carolina and Virginia, many of those for Black Democratic candidates. In 2019, he managed Alex Askew’s (D-Virginia Beach) winning campaign for Virginia House of Delegates. In 2018, he worked for North Carolina candidate Sydney Batch, who became the first African American to represent the 37th House District in Wake County. Two years later, she was elected to the North Carolina Senate.
“She was the first Democrat to win a seat [in that district] since the Roosevelt administration,” he said of the 2018 race.
His consulting experience helps him understand the concerns of small-business owners, he said. He believes that public education is key to improving the local economy and decreasing poverty in the city. He wants raises for teachers, and he said he did not support council’s recent decision to change the way it allocates budget surpluses to Roanoke City Public Schools.
“We need to make sure people have … access to education, because it goes hand in hand and breaking the cycle” of poverty, he said. “The fact that [council is] haggling about that, it’s just baffling to me.”
He does not support development at Evans Spring, primarily because he does not expect the city would see a return on its investment.
“If they can’t come up with a better plan for the neighborhood, and keep expecting the city to dish out money for that development, I’m perfectly fine with it sitting there how it is,” he said.
